Griffin Gallery is delighted to present ‘I Lost My Heart to a Starship Trooper’, a group exhibition that examines the importance of appropriation and influence on the practices of ten contemporary artists.

The show is curated by the London-based art consultant Catherine Loewe, in collaboration with Griffin Gallery Director Becca Pelly-Fry.

Exhibiting Artists:
Glenn Brown
Luke Caulfield
Gordon Cheung
Stephane Graff
Henry Hudson
Nick Hornby & Sinta Tantra
Wolfe Von Lenkiewicz
Mariele Neudecker
Gavin Turk

The exhibition title comes from the 1978 Hot Gossip song of the same name, and also refers to the artist Glenn Brown who used the title for one of his paintings; a meticulous rendition of a Rembrandt.  This time collision of mass media, popular culture and venerated Old Masters encapsulates the complex, and at times subversive, relationship between contemporary art and art of the past, and this in part was the genesis of the exhibition.  While all of the featured works open up myriad lines of enquiry, from challenging notions of value and authorship, to examining modern morality, the show is in essence about the artists’ relationship with the art historical canon from the Old Masters to the present.  The theme alludes to the collective hysteria surrounding the art market and fuses the double Frieze Fairs, the Contemporary and the Masters, in this case blurring the distinguishing factors.  The works in the exhibition include both traditional materials and the use of new technologies in a wide variety of media, from plasticine to video projection.

Image: ‘Copyright the Artist. Courtesy Ben Brown Fine Arts, London’